Brazilian leader says tape doctored

RIO DE JANEIRO — Fighting to save his job amid a mushrooming corruption scandal, Brazilian President Michel Temer told the nation on Saturday that an incriminating audio recording of him had been doctored.

“That clandestine recording was manipulated and doctored with [bad] intentions,” Temer said at a news conference in the capital, Brasilia.

Temer said he had filed a petition with the Supreme Federal Tribunal, the country’s highest court, to suspend the corruption investigation until experts can analyze the audio that appears to capture him endorsing the payment of bribes to ex-House Speaker Eduardo Cunha for his silence.

The court previously authorized the opening of the investigation into Temer and ordered it be made public.

Temer noted the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported that the 39-minute recording had been edited. The audio was first reported Wednesday by the Globo newspaper.

Temer also questioned the motives of the man who made the recording, JBS meatpacking company executive Joesley Batista. He accused Batista of buying “large quantities of dollars to cause chaos on the exchange market” before giving the tape to prosecutors.

Temer’s claims about the audio and Batista couldn’t be immediately verified. The recording was turned over to prosecutors as part of a Batista plea bargain.

In the audio, Temer apparently endorses bribes for Cunha, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for corruption and money laundering and who led the impeachment push against then-President Dilma Rousseff last year.

Rousseff was eventually ousted for illegal management of the federal budget, bringing Temer, who was her vice president, to power.

It was unclear what effect Temer’s remarks would have on the spreading movement that seeks his resignation. Even if the audio was edited, Temer’s words to Batista to keep up the payments to Cunha seem clear. And Temer did not mention the long list of other allegations against him, nor acknowledge that allies have started to bolt.

Soon before Temer spoke, the Brazilian Socialist Party announced it was breaking from his coalition. The loss of its seven senators and 35 deputies are a setback to Temer’s plans to overhaul the country’s pension system and labor laws.

The leaders of several other parties in Temer’s coalition planned to consult with their members Saturday in Brasilia.

Brazil’s highest court released documents Friday revealing that the nation’s top prosecutor is accusing Temer of corruption, obstruction of justice and being part of a criminal organization. In one plea bargain for Batista, released as part of the tribunal’s document dump, Temer is accused of taking $1.5 million in bribes. In another, Temer is accused of pocketing about $350,000 of $4.5 million in illegal campaign finance that was channeled by the Workers’ Party for the 2014 presidential ticket that included Temer as the vice presidential candidate.

The calls for Temer to resign have been joined by Globo, the flagship paper of Brazil’s biggest media company, which had been supporting the president’s legislative program to boost an economy mired in its worst recession in decades. The company generally wields significant influence among Brazilians because of its popular soap operas and media dominance.

“The president has lost the moral, ethical, political and administrative conditions to continue governing Brazil,” Globo said in an editorial.

Attorney General Rodrigo Janot’s formal presentation of evidence was an extraordinary development in a corruption probe that is upending politics and just about everything else in Latin America’s largest nation.

Janot accused Temer and Sen. Aecio Neves of trying to derail the 3-year-old “Car Wash” investigation into a kickback scheme at the staterun oil company Petrobras, via legislative means and by influencing police investigators.

At least eight pieces of legislation to impeach Temer have been proposed in Congress.